


I Carry You In My Blood

by fireun



Category: The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: Angst, Feels, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-31
Updated: 2013-08-31
Packaged: 2017-12-25 05:48:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/949360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fireun/pseuds/fireun
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Barton had shifted, evolved from that moment when Coulson had brought him in</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Carry You In My Blood

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AnaliseGrey](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnaliseGrey/gifts).



Everyone had their story, their personal shit they carried around. It cluttered up the back end of conversations, darkened the edges of looks and hovered at the tail of every movement. If you knew where to look. Functioning through all that baggage, all that shit, was an art form. A life skill. SHIELD agents honed that talent until they had everyone convinced they were just another normal Joe sitting at a café sipping at freaking expensive coffee like it was manna from the heavens. Nothing special or screwed up about them. Of course, every other SHIELD agent knew it was all a bullshit act, but they were polite about pretending everything was all good. 

Clint Barton came in dragging the lion’s share of personal shit, and he had the fucked up coping mechanisms to go along with it, little twitches and tweaks he had developed trying to sort himself out and go it alone. Somehow he had wrapped everything he was around a cocky, crooked smile and an uncanny ability to hit every target. He was just as lethal with words as with more conventional projectiles, and as a result most SHIELD agents learned to keep a distance. No one was masochist enough to want to go more than one or two rounds with the Hawk.

No one apart from Phil Coulson.

Poor bastard must have drawn the short straw, younger agents murmured into meals, into each other’s ears when they thought no one else was listening. Crazy fucker was the only one with the cool and the skills to keep up with the irritating little pest, more road worn agents chuckled with a mix of admiration and appreciation of it being someone else’s job, wrangling Hawkeye.

Whatever it was, while Coulson may not have housebroken the Hawk, Coulson had definitely done something to warrant some measure of obedience. Barton was just a sneer away from documentable disobedience on a good day, until Coulson entered the room and the picture. Comments were no less scathing when they were together, but Barton’s intelligence was more apparent. It was obvious he had the information to back up his insubordination.

Clint Barton, Hawkeye, was the perfectly wrong mix of very skilled and smart enough to realize it. But somehow Phil Coulson had pulled him to ground without clipping his wings. The Hawk was still as deadly as the mercenary SHIELD had recruited, but now he was their deadly weapon, honed to something shaper then the streets and clandestine contacts could have ever created. He was Phil Coulson’s artillery, and through him, SHIELDs.

Coulson knew all of Barton’s coping mechanisms for what they were, the sneer and insubordination carefully covered up a sense of self-worth that was so withered as to be non-existent. What sense of worth he had, Barton found in the pull of a bowstring, the release, the knowledge he could do something no one else could. That he was useful. Barton’s personal shit had a way of becoming everyone’s problem. His coping mechanisms were loud, intrusive, and his need to be the best, at his best, at all times, led to some truly idiotic avoidances of medical treatment and some hideous blood stains in Coulson’s office. 

Barton had shifted, evolved from that moment when Coulson had brought him in, at the business end of a rather impressively concealed gun and casual attitude. His blue eyes narrowed as he took in everything Coulson had to offer and he started to rebuild himself, smothering the shit away in the middle where no one would think to look. No one wanted to look closer- to get too close meant a snark, a snarl, a punch, or a long day of cunning projectiles. 

But Coulson had been there since the beginning, and he was damn hard to fool. Barton saw best from a distance. Coulson caught all the little details up close.

He caught the way Barton sought him out for clarification (reassurance). For feedback (approval). Or, on the rarest of occasions, company (contact). Coulson listened to what Barton was saying, but paid most attention to how- his expression, what his hands were doing, the little tells Barton had to know he was displaying as they only came out when the two of them were alone. Little tells that Barton respected (trusted) Coulson enough to display (share) as he worked at communicating more efficiently in this world of cooperative ops (opening up).

Barton belonged to SHIELD, but mostly by proxy. It was more or less understood, even by the Big Guy himself, that Barton answered to Coulson first. And really, that wasn’t usually all that much of a screw up. Except when things went completely balls up.  
It went balls up when Barton managed to get himself brain snatched by the enemy. Only Coulson and Fury fully comprehended how very screwed they were, but they tried to work with it. Tried to work around one of their slipperiest and deadliest assets suddenly playing for the wrong team. Coulson worked with his own shitty coping mechanisms, the feeling that he had failed the other man, that somehow he could have trained Barton to defend against a God. He sublimated like mad and was ten times the cold ass efficient mother fucker necessary to try and pull them all through this.

It was almost enough.

It was enough to get Barton back, but half of a very important equation was missing. The armature. The cool façade that mellowed out the sheer active heat that was Barton. Coulson was gone and everyone expected Barton to take a flying leap off the deep end.

To everyone’s surprise, he didn’t. He buried his mourning just as deep as he did everything else, adopt a bit of Coulson’s cool, maybe understanding it a bit better now for what it was. Epiphany through mortality- didn’t that just sum up the screwed up whirlwind that was their lives?

To no one’s surprise Barton staked a claim on Coulson’s office. Bastard wouldn’t even yield to the Old Man himself- it came down to a glaring contest, three utterly calm eyes sizing each other up across Coulson’s old desk.  
Fury nodded once, turned sharply and left. Not everything was a confrontation, and damn if he was going to take away the tattered remains of his best assets security blanket. But that’s all it was- a security blanket. Coulson had trained the kid well. Had trained him to last.

Would probably outlast them all. And Phil had probably planned it that way.

_'Extinguish my sight, and I can still see you; plug up my ears, and I can still hear; even without feet I can walk toward you, and without mouth I can still implore. Break off my arms, and I will hold you with my heart as if it were a hand; strangle my heart, and my brain will still throb; and should you set fire to my brain, I still can carry you with my blood.'_

~Rainer Maria Rilke translated by Annemarie S. Kidder


End file.
